1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to optical connectors, and more particularly to an optical connector to which a ferrule connected to an optical fiber is attached and in which an element that performs photoelectric conversion is provided.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, transmission lines adopted as international standard interfaces in standards such as 10GFC and 10 GBASE-CX4 are subject to restraints such as being as short in transmission distance as approximately 20 m. In response, optical connectors have been proposed that increase transmission distance by combining a high-speed transmission line using one of such interfaces and an optical transmission line.
Most conventional optical connectors use an edge-emitting diode as a photoelectric conversion element. This edge-emitting diode, which consumes a large amount of power and is expensive, has been replaced with a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) of late. (See, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2006-309113.)
The VCSEL is lower in cost and power consumption than the edge-emitting diode. Further, the light emission of the VCSEL is perpendicular to the surface of a board on which the VCSEL is mounted, which facilitates two-dimensional arrangement on the board.
However, while being advantageous as described above, using the VCSEL as a photoelectric conversion element has the following problem. That is, while a ferrule connected to an optical fiber is attached to the optical connector in a direction parallel to the board, the VCSEL emits light in a direction perpendicular to the board surface as described above. This requires the optical path of the light emitted from the VCSEL to make a substantially right-angled turn for the emitted light to enter the optical fiber.
Therefore, according to the optical connector described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2006-309113, a waveguide array that causes the optical path of light emitted from the VCSEL to make a substantially right-angled turn is provided on a board.